Classification with the pot–pot plot

We propose a procedure for supervised classification that is based on potential functions. The potential of a class is defined as a kernel density estimate multiplied by the class’s prior probability. The method transforms the data to a potential–potential (pot–pot) plot, where each data point is mapped to a vector of potentials. Separation of the classes, as well as classification of new data points, is performed on this plot. For this, either the $$\alpha $$ α -procedure ( $$\alpha $$ α -P) or k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) are employed. For data that are generated from continuous distributions, these classifiers prove to be strongly Bayes-consistent. The potentials depend on the kernel and its bandwidth used in the density estimate. We investigate several variants of bandwidth selection, including joint and separate pre-scaling and a bandwidth regression approach. The new method is applied to benchmark data from the literature, including simulated data sets as well as 50 sets of real data. It compares favorably to known classification methods such as LDA, QDA, max kernel density estimates, k-NN, and DD-plot classification using depth functions.